Urdnot Thrak: The Blessing of Injury
Feb 27, 2017 4:59:55 GMT -6
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Post by Urdnot Thrak on Feb 27, 2017 4:59:55 GMT -6
Thrak skidded to a stop, hiding under cover, a mere three hundred meters from his objective. He knew the route to the Clan Weyrloc outpost by heart, having scouted the around it himself half a dozen times in the past several months. Until he heard from his battlemaster, he would wait. He was no master strategist, but he understood the need for timing in a fight. That, and he had no desire to rush the base himself. The fact that he could already hear gunfire did not bode well for the success of the mission.
“Bad news,” the familiar voice of his battlemaster cracked over his comms. “Your reinforcements got themselves spotted. Dumb klixen. It’s up to you.”
“You’ve been drinking too much ryncol again,” Thrak shot back, after a series of short curses under his breath. “That outpost is manned by at least six of their best fighters at all times.”
“Not my fault,” Wrex said. “Besides, you can take them.”
“Did Jarrod head-butt you too many times as a child?” Thrak demanded. “Get more men here to back me up.”
“No time,” Wrex said. “You need to get moving now, or the whole plan falls apart.”
Thrak cursed. Wrex was usually a good battlemaster, but then there were times like these, when he was given nearly impossible missions and forced to make do with what he was given. Thrak was not always the one who the most difficult tasks fell to; the chaos of war determined that as much as the strategies of one’s leaders. He was, though, one of the few who was trusted with the hardest tasks, and that was how he liked it. Times when things went like this, though, were another story entirely.
“Damn it,” Thrak said over his comms, as he pushed himself up, “if I make it through this, I’m going to rip out your spine and beat you to death with it, old man.”
Wrex was only a little older than Thrak in reality, but he somehow seemed to have the wisdom of a shaman twice his age. That, as much as anything, was why Thrak followed him. Because, someday, Wrex would lead them to the future.
Sometimes he heard Wrex talking about his ideas and dreams. Talking about a new way of life for the krogan. Thrak did not know if such was even possible, but he respected his battlemaster’s idealism. Wrex said that he would soon approach Jarrod about them, and it seemed that he wanted to have as many impressive victories behind him as possible before making his case. It was a good plan, but it meant a lot of hard fighting. Well, harder fighting than usual- not the fun kind.
Rather than take the comment as a true threat, the other krogan cackled over the channel. “Only if I don’t head-butt you back to the Golden Age.”
Outfitted as he was, a crude assault rifle and cobbled together shotgun as his main weapons, Thrak knew he needed something else to give him an edge if he was going to succeed. Thrak cast his gaze about, an idea coming to him. It took him only a moment to spot the old, broken-down tomkah that lay wrapped around an upturned piece of road a few dozen yards off. When he reached it, he gritted his teeth and pulled the armored door from its hinges.
Turning the hunk of metal around, he found two large handles, to push the door up or pull it down if the hydraulics were damaged. He grunted, placing the door on the ground and pinning it in place with one foot, as his hands grasped the handles and pulled until they bent out-of-shape. Picking the wrecked slab of metal up, he thrust his left arm through both of the handles, finding that it functioned reasonably-well as a shield.
It was heavy, but he was strong. The makeshift shield would not slow him down, and it would be capable of absorbing considerable amounts of punishment before buckling. He grinned at his ingenuity, as he started off towards the outpost, sticking to cover behind rock outcroppings, no one in the outpost even taking note of him.
The base was simple, a crude, single-room box with an open strip running the entire outer wall, allowing a small area through which to gaze out on the barren landscape around them and open fire on any who would encroach on their territory. The opening was small enough that it was almost impossible to aim a heavy weapon to detonate inside, though those inside could certainly aim whatever weapons they so desired at passers-by. The outer walls were thick enough to be essentially impervious to all but the biggest bombs or, of course, an orbital strike. Dozens of these were scattered throughout the perimeter of Weyrloc territory, making their clan one of the hardest to strike at.
The Weyrloc clanmen were firing on the other members of his strike team, who had been stupid enough to get caught. With their full force pinning down the Urdnot men, none of their troops saw him run right up to the back door, which he kicked down with a single blow. Amidst the gunfire, the sound of the door slamming down was not enough to get the attention of all of the other krogan, just the smart ones. Six krogan kept firing on the rest of Thrak’s squad, while three others turned around in shock.
Damn. More than usual here today.
The nearest of the krogan, only two meters away, fell almost instantly, as Thrak leveled his shotgun at the man’s face and pulled the trigger before any of his foes had brought weapons to bare on him. The next krogan got off a half-dozen shots, his assault-rifle rounds bouncing harmlessly off his makeshift shield; a shot to the face took down the second man too. The last of the three staggered Thrak, as he slammed into the shield with his right shoulder. With a grunt of strained effort, though, Thrak managed to hold his ground as the other krogan continued his efforts to push him back. The third shot was not as clean as the previous two, Thrak having to reach around the shield, only managing to press the shotgun to the back of the other krogan’s neck before pulling the trigger.
The rest of the others turned to him, their weapons at the ready. Thrak knew from experience that his shotgun was close to overheating after three shots in such rapid succession. If he gave ground or took cover, they would overwhelm him with superior numbers. Instead, he did what he was good at. He turned on his tech armor and charged straight into the center of the fray.
Half or more of the shots missed, as he ducked and dodged while he made his way to his foes. Most of the rest bounced harmlessly off the shield. Only a small number hit his enhanced armor and shields. Even without his new toy, he would have survived that opening barrage, though only by a slim margin.
“For Urdnot!” he yelled, as he reached the group of men.
He swung the shield wide, as hard as he could, angling it so that the edge would be parallel to the ground. The impact caved in the skull and helmet of the first man it hit, dropping him helplessly to the ground. It only dislocated the shoulder of the next man, who Thrak assumed had been asleep when the attack started, as he wore only the chestplate and greaves of his armor. Thrak continued the spin, almost a full three hundred and sixty degrees, knocking another krogan to the ground before stopping.
He smiled under his helmet. Should be cool enough by now.
He pulled the trigger on the downed man, reducing his head to ragged strips of flesh and jagged shards of what was once a helmet. His shotgun had just lined up with the man whose shoulder he had dislocated when a shotgun blast from behind shattered his tech armor, staggering all of the remaining men. It caused his first shot to miss, reducing the man’s opposite arm to a useless flail, when the shot shattered the bone of the shoulder socket. The krogan fell to the floor, yelling in pain.
Knowing he needed to give his tech armor a moment, he used his biotics to reinforce his barrier. He charged forward, pinning a staggered man to the wall and pulling the trigger of his shotgun twice in quick succession, reducing the organs in his opponent’s chest and abdomen to jelly with the point-blank blasts. As he turned back to the remaining two, he stomped the head of the man with the useless arms, ending his agony.
He stared down the other two. Most krogan would have charged immediately, but Thrak understood the morale effects intimidation could have on an enemy, and he was also eager to let his tech armor recharge as much as he could. Of the two remaining men, one seemed to be the unit’s sniper, gauging by the impressive off-world rifle slung over his back, though he had traded it out in favor of his shotgun, since their base had been broken into. The other was clearly the group’s battle-master, outfitted in impressive heavy armor, finer by far than Thrak’s own. On the battlemaster’s left shoulder was what appeared to be a fuel tank, which made sense given the nozzle with lit flame extending from his one gauntlet.
The Weyrloc soldier’s muscles tensed, as though he was about to charge, an instant before his head exploded from a single sniper shot. It almost made Thrak laugh out loud, the enemy sniper taken out by one of Urdnot’s own specialists. Rather than wait for another shot to come, though, the battlemaster strode calmly over to the wall and pressed a button. A blast shield slammed down, cutting off the outside light and leaving only a dim yellow glow.
Thrak was about to engage in a moment of boastful banter, when he found himself stumbling backwards, the battlemaster suddenly inches in front of him.
Damn. Vanguard.
The other krogan, almost half a head taller than Thrak, who himself was a larger than most, grabbed his makeshift shield with both hands and by it threw the smaller man halfway across the room. When Thrak hit the far wall, he felt ribs break, and he coughed up blood. The other krogan was on him again in an instant, knocking him back against the wall and breaking even more ribs. With a wicked bellow, the other man grabbed the shield with one hand and activated his flamethrower.
“I’m gonna cook you!” the larger krogan yelled, even as Thrak felt the shield heating up uncomfortably against his arm.
Thrak struggled to push back against the other krogan, but being up against the wall did not give him the footing he needed. The metal of the shield was starting to glow, and Thrak cried out in pain, as he the armor on his gauntlet grew hot enough to burn his arm. The pain brought him a clarity, a rage as white-hot as the flames being used against him. With a bellow of agony, he put all of his weight on the slowly-cooking shield-arm, lifting himself slightly into the air and planting his feet on the wall behind himself. He felt the heady rush of success, even before compressing his entire body into a spring and launching off the wall, pinning the other krogan onto the floor, under the shield.
His joy at victory was short-lived, though, as the other man pulled a pistol and started unloading it into the smaller krogan’s leg and foot. The power of his biotic barrier failed along with his shield, and metal slugs tore into his flesh. It was then that Thrak realized he was outmatched.
The next moment, his mind found his salvation. With great effort, as the other krogan continued firing into Thrak’s leg, he managed to wiggle his shotgun back into the open and into play. He would not be able to get an angle on the man’s head or neck. The fuel tank, though…
The explosion that followed when he pulled the trigger sent him flying into the ceiling, before leaving him to crash back down, smacking his helmet hard against the shield, which still burned into his arm. With a cry of pain, he pulled the glowing metal from his arm, surprised to find that the armor underneath, while hot, was nowhere near glowing. He tried to get up and walk, only to realize that the successive shots to his leg while wrestling with the vanguard had rendered the leg mostly useless.
He knew he would recover; he had suffered worse during The Rite. He also knew, though, that it would take time to recover. He applied omni-gel to what wounds he could before bringing up his comms. “Urdnot Thrak here. Weyrloc boarder outpost three, eliminated. I think I’m going to need some help getting out of here, though.”
“Thrak! You crazy bastard. The rest of your team will pick you up and bring you home. Good job,” Wrex called over the comms.
Thrak only grunted.
“Bad news,” the familiar voice of his battlemaster cracked over his comms. “Your reinforcements got themselves spotted. Dumb klixen. It’s up to you.”
“You’ve been drinking too much ryncol again,” Thrak shot back, after a series of short curses under his breath. “That outpost is manned by at least six of their best fighters at all times.”
“Not my fault,” Wrex said. “Besides, you can take them.”
“Did Jarrod head-butt you too many times as a child?” Thrak demanded. “Get more men here to back me up.”
“No time,” Wrex said. “You need to get moving now, or the whole plan falls apart.”
Thrak cursed. Wrex was usually a good battlemaster, but then there were times like these, when he was given nearly impossible missions and forced to make do with what he was given. Thrak was not always the one who the most difficult tasks fell to; the chaos of war determined that as much as the strategies of one’s leaders. He was, though, one of the few who was trusted with the hardest tasks, and that was how he liked it. Times when things went like this, though, were another story entirely.
“Damn it,” Thrak said over his comms, as he pushed himself up, “if I make it through this, I’m going to rip out your spine and beat you to death with it, old man.”
Wrex was only a little older than Thrak in reality, but he somehow seemed to have the wisdom of a shaman twice his age. That, as much as anything, was why Thrak followed him. Because, someday, Wrex would lead them to the future.
Sometimes he heard Wrex talking about his ideas and dreams. Talking about a new way of life for the krogan. Thrak did not know if such was even possible, but he respected his battlemaster’s idealism. Wrex said that he would soon approach Jarrod about them, and it seemed that he wanted to have as many impressive victories behind him as possible before making his case. It was a good plan, but it meant a lot of hard fighting. Well, harder fighting than usual- not the fun kind.
Rather than take the comment as a true threat, the other krogan cackled over the channel. “Only if I don’t head-butt you back to the Golden Age.”
Outfitted as he was, a crude assault rifle and cobbled together shotgun as his main weapons, Thrak knew he needed something else to give him an edge if he was going to succeed. Thrak cast his gaze about, an idea coming to him. It took him only a moment to spot the old, broken-down tomkah that lay wrapped around an upturned piece of road a few dozen yards off. When he reached it, he gritted his teeth and pulled the armored door from its hinges.
Turning the hunk of metal around, he found two large handles, to push the door up or pull it down if the hydraulics were damaged. He grunted, placing the door on the ground and pinning it in place with one foot, as his hands grasped the handles and pulled until they bent out-of-shape. Picking the wrecked slab of metal up, he thrust his left arm through both of the handles, finding that it functioned reasonably-well as a shield.
It was heavy, but he was strong. The makeshift shield would not slow him down, and it would be capable of absorbing considerable amounts of punishment before buckling. He grinned at his ingenuity, as he started off towards the outpost, sticking to cover behind rock outcroppings, no one in the outpost even taking note of him.
The base was simple, a crude, single-room box with an open strip running the entire outer wall, allowing a small area through which to gaze out on the barren landscape around them and open fire on any who would encroach on their territory. The opening was small enough that it was almost impossible to aim a heavy weapon to detonate inside, though those inside could certainly aim whatever weapons they so desired at passers-by. The outer walls were thick enough to be essentially impervious to all but the biggest bombs or, of course, an orbital strike. Dozens of these were scattered throughout the perimeter of Weyrloc territory, making their clan one of the hardest to strike at.
The Weyrloc clanmen were firing on the other members of his strike team, who had been stupid enough to get caught. With their full force pinning down the Urdnot men, none of their troops saw him run right up to the back door, which he kicked down with a single blow. Amidst the gunfire, the sound of the door slamming down was not enough to get the attention of all of the other krogan, just the smart ones. Six krogan kept firing on the rest of Thrak’s squad, while three others turned around in shock.
Damn. More than usual here today.
The nearest of the krogan, only two meters away, fell almost instantly, as Thrak leveled his shotgun at the man’s face and pulled the trigger before any of his foes had brought weapons to bare on him. The next krogan got off a half-dozen shots, his assault-rifle rounds bouncing harmlessly off his makeshift shield; a shot to the face took down the second man too. The last of the three staggered Thrak, as he slammed into the shield with his right shoulder. With a grunt of strained effort, though, Thrak managed to hold his ground as the other krogan continued his efforts to push him back. The third shot was not as clean as the previous two, Thrak having to reach around the shield, only managing to press the shotgun to the back of the other krogan’s neck before pulling the trigger.
The rest of the others turned to him, their weapons at the ready. Thrak knew from experience that his shotgun was close to overheating after three shots in such rapid succession. If he gave ground or took cover, they would overwhelm him with superior numbers. Instead, he did what he was good at. He turned on his tech armor and charged straight into the center of the fray.
Half or more of the shots missed, as he ducked and dodged while he made his way to his foes. Most of the rest bounced harmlessly off the shield. Only a small number hit his enhanced armor and shields. Even without his new toy, he would have survived that opening barrage, though only by a slim margin.
“For Urdnot!” he yelled, as he reached the group of men.
He swung the shield wide, as hard as he could, angling it so that the edge would be parallel to the ground. The impact caved in the skull and helmet of the first man it hit, dropping him helplessly to the ground. It only dislocated the shoulder of the next man, who Thrak assumed had been asleep when the attack started, as he wore only the chestplate and greaves of his armor. Thrak continued the spin, almost a full three hundred and sixty degrees, knocking another krogan to the ground before stopping.
He smiled under his helmet. Should be cool enough by now.
He pulled the trigger on the downed man, reducing his head to ragged strips of flesh and jagged shards of what was once a helmet. His shotgun had just lined up with the man whose shoulder he had dislocated when a shotgun blast from behind shattered his tech armor, staggering all of the remaining men. It caused his first shot to miss, reducing the man’s opposite arm to a useless flail, when the shot shattered the bone of the shoulder socket. The krogan fell to the floor, yelling in pain.
Knowing he needed to give his tech armor a moment, he used his biotics to reinforce his barrier. He charged forward, pinning a staggered man to the wall and pulling the trigger of his shotgun twice in quick succession, reducing the organs in his opponent’s chest and abdomen to jelly with the point-blank blasts. As he turned back to the remaining two, he stomped the head of the man with the useless arms, ending his agony.
He stared down the other two. Most krogan would have charged immediately, but Thrak understood the morale effects intimidation could have on an enemy, and he was also eager to let his tech armor recharge as much as he could. Of the two remaining men, one seemed to be the unit’s sniper, gauging by the impressive off-world rifle slung over his back, though he had traded it out in favor of his shotgun, since their base had been broken into. The other was clearly the group’s battle-master, outfitted in impressive heavy armor, finer by far than Thrak’s own. On the battlemaster’s left shoulder was what appeared to be a fuel tank, which made sense given the nozzle with lit flame extending from his one gauntlet.
The Weyrloc soldier’s muscles tensed, as though he was about to charge, an instant before his head exploded from a single sniper shot. It almost made Thrak laugh out loud, the enemy sniper taken out by one of Urdnot’s own specialists. Rather than wait for another shot to come, though, the battlemaster strode calmly over to the wall and pressed a button. A blast shield slammed down, cutting off the outside light and leaving only a dim yellow glow.
Thrak was about to engage in a moment of boastful banter, when he found himself stumbling backwards, the battlemaster suddenly inches in front of him.
Damn. Vanguard.
The other krogan, almost half a head taller than Thrak, who himself was a larger than most, grabbed his makeshift shield with both hands and by it threw the smaller man halfway across the room. When Thrak hit the far wall, he felt ribs break, and he coughed up blood. The other krogan was on him again in an instant, knocking him back against the wall and breaking even more ribs. With a wicked bellow, the other man grabbed the shield with one hand and activated his flamethrower.
“I’m gonna cook you!” the larger krogan yelled, even as Thrak felt the shield heating up uncomfortably against his arm.
Thrak struggled to push back against the other krogan, but being up against the wall did not give him the footing he needed. The metal of the shield was starting to glow, and Thrak cried out in pain, as he the armor on his gauntlet grew hot enough to burn his arm. The pain brought him a clarity, a rage as white-hot as the flames being used against him. With a bellow of agony, he put all of his weight on the slowly-cooking shield-arm, lifting himself slightly into the air and planting his feet on the wall behind himself. He felt the heady rush of success, even before compressing his entire body into a spring and launching off the wall, pinning the other krogan onto the floor, under the shield.
His joy at victory was short-lived, though, as the other man pulled a pistol and started unloading it into the smaller krogan’s leg and foot. The power of his biotic barrier failed along with his shield, and metal slugs tore into his flesh. It was then that Thrak realized he was outmatched.
The next moment, his mind found his salvation. With great effort, as the other krogan continued firing into Thrak’s leg, he managed to wiggle his shotgun back into the open and into play. He would not be able to get an angle on the man’s head or neck. The fuel tank, though…
The explosion that followed when he pulled the trigger sent him flying into the ceiling, before leaving him to crash back down, smacking his helmet hard against the shield, which still burned into his arm. With a cry of pain, he pulled the glowing metal from his arm, surprised to find that the armor underneath, while hot, was nowhere near glowing. He tried to get up and walk, only to realize that the successive shots to his leg while wrestling with the vanguard had rendered the leg mostly useless.
He knew he would recover; he had suffered worse during The Rite. He also knew, though, that it would take time to recover. He applied omni-gel to what wounds he could before bringing up his comms. “Urdnot Thrak here. Weyrloc boarder outpost three, eliminated. I think I’m going to need some help getting out of here, though.”
“Thrak! You crazy bastard. The rest of your team will pick you up and bring you home. Good job,” Wrex called over the comms.
Thrak only grunted.